As explained earlier, my fairly straightforward app will input regularly updating information about an industry (via human keyboarding), into a db that then becomes basis to create weekly reports of the industry updates. Hence, the input side of this app is similar to an administrative backend.

To fill some of the items on an individual input page, lookup tables (in relational-speak) need to be used for all the stock descriptors; they will be used in specifying an industry update (for example, to specify region of the world). In other words, in addition to the table being populated with individual industry updates, there need to be additional tables, static lookup tables, accessible to the page where industry updates are being input.

Of course, this also means on the update insert page there will be dynamic pulldown menus that have been populated from the lookup tables.

To this end.

I have watched the youtube tutorial on using relational tables. An earlier version of DataAssist there, but entirely helpful on an 'include,' I think.

Does the notion of the Insert plug-in, through Framework Builder, still apply here? (To get an 'include,' I think.) But I will not be including a page, only the results from the query into the lookup table. I see Dynamic Plugin there - what do I need to know about its use?

What do I need to know / anything further needed to make this work in my case?

Have also read through the tutorial, Manage relational tables.

http://www.webassist.com/tutorials/Manage-relational-tables

Deep down in this tutorial, re the MRT server behavior: Will the machinery accommodate lookup tables, which I believe (uncommonly) share the parent table's Primary key? So only one key, between the two tables.

[CORRECTING my own error, here: Lookup tables do not typically share the Primary key. To note the typical case, subset tables, in a one-to-one relation, share the Primary key with the parent.]

Again, does anything else need to be known in this regard?

Finally, I have not yet identified the tutorials for creating dynamic pulldown menus. May I check where I go to get myself up to date on that?

And best to check, what / where else should I be looking to get arms around this?

as far as lookup tables go, in the data assist wizard, on the Manage pages tab, go to the Field settings section

for the columns that will use lookup data, set them to use a menu as the display, click the lightning bolt to access the menu settings and select the loop table use, set the ID column and the label column.

what this will do is add a recordset to the page for be used to populate the menu and add a join query to the main recordset to lookup the label to display on the results page.

do this with a small sample to inspect the results and get a better idea.

Lookup tables are used to create a 1 to Many Data relation ship, the Relational tables concept is used for creating a Many to Many relationship. For example:

lets take the concept of Products and Categories. In some cases, you may set up products so that they can only belong to 1 category. This would use the linking table concept using a structure like this:

in this structure the category is set in the products table so that the product is limited to belonging to only one category.

If you wanted to allow the product to belong to many categories, you would use a third relational table. the products table would not contain the productCategoryID column. you would create another table as:

(And since overdue, let me notice that, in my newbie-ness, I misstated - in the initial post in this thread - and suggested that lookup tables share the parent table primary key. That is incorrect generally. It is one-to-one relations, typically with subset tables, where the primary key is shared.

(Important to make this correction for any future reader of this thread. I will add a correction to my misstatement in the original.)

Dynamic Dropdowns and Create Dynamic array is for forms that have two select list menus (dropdowns) that have a parent-child relationship where one filters the other on the fly.

For instance an application where you ask people for the make and model of a car and when they choose the make you only want model options for that particular make to be available.

With one to one relationships you can just populate a list with the related table and update the id in the parent table directly. Intermediate tables and manage relational table options are only needed for one to many and many to many relationships.